Bad trip ... or junk research?Somehow I doubt it.
For all the uproar over cartoons, imagine if the Islamists were told Mohamed was tripping all the time.
The bible is packed with drug-fuelled visions of miracles and according to a leading academic when Moses met God to receive the Ten Commandments he was on a hallucinogen-induced high.More from Shannon here.
The theory, published this week in international philosophy journal Time and Mind, claims that key events of the Old Testament are actually records of visions by ancient Israelites high on hallucinogenic drugs.
Benny Shannon, a professor at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, where he was head of the psychology department, believes that a popular plant concoction could hold the key to some unexplained "miracles".
"In the southern regions of the Holy Land and in the Sinai Peninsula there grow two plants containing the molecules that together constitute the key ingredients of one of the most powerful psychedelic substances in existence," he wrote.
The substance is a drink called Ayahuasca, and is today still used by Amazonians in Brazil for their religious rituals.
The professor came up with the theory when reading the Bible and deciding the events described were similar to visions he had after trying this drink 15 years ago.
Professor Shannon undertook further "research" and textual analysis.
He claims that five accounts of Moses' life were induced by hallucinogens.
As Aldous Huxley noted in conjunction with mescaline, the psychotropic agent reveals heretofore hidden and un charted territories of the mind. With this, it may indicate that some features normally considered as defining characteristics of the human cognitive system need not necessarily hold.
I suspect Professor Shannon spent a little too much time tripping in the jungle.
Thanks to Hot Air for the link.
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